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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28674255">Morning Hours</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyfrenchfry/pseuds/saltyfrenchfry'>saltyfrenchfry</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Family Feels, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fatherhood, Fluff, Gen, Jace is a Good Dad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:40:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,062</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28674255</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyfrenchfry/pseuds/saltyfrenchfry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>To celebrate Jace's birthday, a quiet, soft moment between Jace and his daughter.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Morning Hours</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took Jace a few seconds to shed the sleep from his brain, eyelids flickering open to the unlit bedroom.</p><p>It was the early hours of the morning. A yellowish grey light was just starting to creep through the windows, in the distance the noise of New York’s traffic announcing the start of another day. Then, the reason he had woken up in the first place. His daughter screaming her little lungs out.</p><p>Jace let go of Clary, rolling on his back and dragging himself up in a groggy, heavy haze. He felt Clary begin to stir too, but she had already gotten up a few hours back so he clumsily leaned down to press a kiss to her shoulder, mumbled something like, “got it,” at her, and dragged his feet off the bed, rubbing his knuckles over his tired eyes.</p><p>Yawning widely and without bothering to cover his mouth, he trudged out of the room towards the painful sounding cry.</p><p>Sophie was looking up at the ceiling with teary green eyes, her face scrunched up and tear-stained. Her small chubby legs flailed in distress, kicking the blanket off, and her little hands were up near her face, squirming slightly as she demanded attention.</p><p>“Good morning,” Jace whispered to his daughter as he lifted her out of the cradle, for it was ten past four and it was still a dusky dark grey outside. The tiny baby squirmed in his arms and wriggled and grizzled, the screaming cry lessening as soon as her father appeared in her vision, replaced completely with a humming, gulping sort of noise as she was held against his shoulder.</p><p>Jace grinned down at the baby, giddy with an overwhelming happiness that hadn’t left him one moment in the few months Sophie had been in the world.</p><p>“Let’s go get you some milk, alright?” he whispered tenderly, stroking the tuft of red hair on top of his daughter’s head, “We don’t want you to wear those tiny lungs out, do we?”</p><p>He carried her down the stairs, one hand held protectively over the curve of her tiny head while Sophie looked around with wide curious eyes. She was such a curious baby already, Jace loved to observe the way she cooed softly at any detail in their home that caught her attention, reaching out with her small hands to grasp at them.</p><p>Once the milk was warmed, Jace returned upstairs and sat in the white rocking chair in the corner of the nursery, his daughter still carefully cradled against him - with that sweet, warm, baby smell - her little fist clinging onto the cotton collar of Jace’s pajama top. She was talking to herself, lots of ‘<em>ooohs</em>’ and ‘<em>aaahs’</em> that were muffled against his chest and left drool all over his shirt.</p><p>It took some awkward but clever movement to continue to clutch his daughter to him and spill a few warm drops on his wrist, but, satisfied it was the right temperature he shifted his daughter and began to feed her.</p><p>The baby latched onto her bottle greedily, and Jace got lost in his thoughts as he admired her. As Sophie grew, she was starting to look more and more like Clary, and Jace found himself looking at her little nose, wondering if she would crinkle it in amusement like his wife did, when she was older. Then, he was carefully studying the way her eyes fluttered closed as she drank, in utter bliss, uncomplicated and complete in her happiness, and Jace hoped that happiness would always be that way for her. It would kill him to know she had to endure even a sliver of what he did.</p><p>Almost in a flash the milk was gone, and Jace moved his daughter back to lean against his shoulder. He rubbed and patted his hand against the tiny back –  stifling his own wide yawns as he did so. “I’m sorry you are stuck with my awful singing putting you back to sleep,” he mumbled between a half hummed lullaby tune, “Your mother is much better than me at lullabies.” He yawned again, feeling his eyelids grow heavy now, as he rocked back and forth in the chair. Jace was pleased to notice though, that even Sophie’s grizzling had quieted down and, when he peered down at her, he found his daughter fast asleep, eyelids fluttering lightly as she dreamed, and small mouth parted open.</p><p>Jace’s own eyes were starting to droop closed and the gentle sway of the chair lulled him to sleep. Despite that, and the fact that she was growing heavy in his arms, he couldn’t bring himself to lay his daughter back in the cradle.</p><p>It was so very warm and so very quiet, and Sophie was perfect. Here was that easy happiness that he wasn’t sure if it was all entirely real. Some days he even found himself questioning whether he might be dreaming or in a coma or the past year had been all a really elaborate hallucination because he still struggled to believe these golden days could really be his.</p>
<hr/><p>Later in the morning, when the sun finally came up in the sky and the cacophony of the traffic outside became more loud and constant, from across the corridor, the creak of bed springs and floorboards and the deep scrape of drawers suggested that Clary was beginning to rise too.</p><p>She walked in the nursery to see Jace deep asleep in the armchair, with Sophie sleeping against his chest.</p><p>In the wash of the new light, the image took on the appearance of an old photograph, one full of warmth and love and so beautiful. The growing light filtered through the linen curtains of the nursery, wrapping around them like a blanket, still gentle enough to not disrupt their slumber.</p><p>Feeling her heart swell with tenderness, Clary carefully stepped into the room and walked over to her small family and carefully leaned down to press a kiss on both their foreheads. Jace was so far gone that he didn’t react at all but Sophie – sweet, baby Sophie – scrunched her face adorably and let of a soft cooing noise.</p><p>This was right, Clary thought to herself as she gazed adoringly at her husband and daughter one last time before letting herself out of the nursery. This was what was meant to happen, after everything.</p>
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